The present disclosure relates generally to dispensing containers for personal care products, and more particularly to dispensing containers having a flexible dispensing partition for dispensing sheeted personal care products.
There are a variety of storing and dispensing containers in the market, particularly those for storing and dispensing personal care products. Personal care products, particularly wipes, have been made from a variety of materials which can be dry or wet when used. Wet wipes can be moistened with a variety of suitable wiping solutions. Typically, wet wipes have been stacked in a container in either a folded or unfolded configuration. For example, containers of wet wipes have been available wherein each of the wet wipes stacked in the container has been arranged in a folded configuration such as a c-folded, z-folded or quarter-folded configuration as are well known to those skilled in the art. Sometimes the folded wet wipes have also been interfolded with the wet wipes immediately above and below in the stack of wet wipes. Wet wipes have also been placed in containers in the form of a continuous web of material which includes perforations to separate the individual wet wipes and which is wound into a roll. Such wet wipes have been used for baby wipes, hand wipes, household cleaning wipes, industrial wipes and the like.
Conventional containers which contain wipes are typically plastic containers, tubs or soft-sided packages which provide a sealed environment for the wet wipes to ensure that they do not become dirty and/or overly dry. To access the wipes, many containers have an access lid that selectively closes an opening disposed on top of the container. The access lid can be manually moved from a closed position wherein the lid covers the opening to an opened position wherein the lid is spaced from the opening to thereby provide access to the opening.
Some of these conventional packages have been configured to provide one at a time dispensing of each wet wipe which can be accomplished using a single hand after the container has been opened. Such single handed, one at a time dispensing is particularly desirable because the other hand of the user or care giver is typically required to be simultaneously used for other functions. For example, when changing a diaper product on an infant, the care giver typically uses one hand to hold and maintain the infant in a desired position while the other hand is attempting to dispense a wet wipe to clean the infant. The care giver may not want to look away from the infant to open the container and access the wipes.
A wide variety of wet wipes dispensing containers are available in the market today. One type of dispensing container is known as a “pop-up” style dispensing container, which often includes a stack of flat interfolded wipes that are dispensed from a tub. The pop-up style containers have gained popularity because the wipes are more readily available to the user than other styles of dispensing containers (e.g., upright cylindrical containers). Although there is a greater opportunity for the wipes in a pop-up style container to at least partially dry out, improvements in container design have mitigated this problem.
However, conventional pop-up style containers are not completely satisfactory because they are often too bulky or unwieldy to be readily transportable. One reason that conventional pop-up style containers are too bulky is that a sufficient distance (also known as “head space”) is needed between the stacked wipes and a dispensing aperture formed in a dispensing partition to allow the stacked wipes to properly unfold and exit the dispensing aperture without “jamming”. Conventional dispensing partitions are typically static, and thus require that a minimum distance be maintained between the stack of wipes and the dispensing aperture to properly dispense wipes.
Additionally, when an access lid is utilized to provide a sealed environment for the wet wipes, the design of conventional dispensing partitions often causes the leading edge of a wipe (i.e., the edge of a wipe protruding out of a dispensing aperture) to prevent the access lid from completely closing or results in the wet wipe extending through the dispensing partition to be pushed back into the container such that no portion of the wipe is readily available for the user to grasp.
Accordingly, a need exists for a dispensing container having a flexible dispensing partition that facilitates reducing the overall size of the dispensing container, that allows the lid to easily close, and inhibits wipes extending through the dispensing partition from being pushed back into the container.